The Bright Room
by Damashi
Summary: Draco discovered it a long time ago at the end of a very long hall, its door barely visible. Strangest of all, it welcomed him.


I am so ready for the next book to come out.

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Draco had never noticed how very long the halls were in the Malfoy Manor. He had grown up with them, knowing their forbidding rigid straightness, though the secret passages that ran behind their walls twisted every which way. The hallways were dark, too. The windows were made of thick, bewitched glass, but mostly weren't there at all because windows made such easy entryways compared to stone walls. Ancient, wealthy, and not entirely good families had to guard their property and secrets.

Draco had never noticed how quiet the hallways were either. In fact, the whole house was deadly quiet, but he looked upon it as completely normal, perhaps in the way a gravedigger learns to view his work as simply a profession. One might go mad otherwise.

When he was younger, and had escaped whatever stiff nanny or tutor his parents might have persuaded with significant amounts of money to brave his tantrums and devious, sneaking mischief, Draco would wander the halls for lack of better things to do. His experiences undeniably earned the title of boredom, but anything was better than the tortures of lessons and inane nursery rhymes supposed to help him remember things he already knew.

He hated being treated like a child.

It was during one of the times of carefully earned freedoms that he found himself trekking down the gallery corridor, one of the longest in the house. Its walls were lined in portraits, most of which sat dustily in their frames, looking indifferently down their noses at the thin, pale child that walked slowly past them, trying to work loose the uncomfortable but elaborately engraved silver clasp of his small robes. Statues lined the way as well, some of them properly still, though a few of them shifted in their places occasionally. He paused to examine one small statue, a cast-bronze statue of Poseidon and a sea horse, the metal waves rippling around them. He stood next to it, gazing at the detailed work intently, almost another bit of art himself, just standing there next to the piece by, who had father said it was? Ah, Claus of Innsbrook, or something like that.

Being still of primary school age, he tired of that quickly and moved on, his gaze swinging from side to side as he returned the haughty gazes of the portraits. He reached the end of the hall after a good walk—something he had not actually done before—and discovered, to his surprise, a small door the same color of the wall, blending in beautifully with only its slightly tarnished silver handle clearly visible. Curious, he wrapped his thin fingers around it and tugged.

It swung open with a grating sound, showering a little dust on the floor—the house elves would get that later—to reveal a dingy passageway. It didn't have the rough-hewn look of a secret hallway, just the dusty emptiness of a place that hadn't seen humans for a very long time, and it neither welcomed him nor pushed him away.

Draco took one small, tentative step inward.

A thin light winked back at him from the end of the short passageway, notifying him with a chipper sort of gleam that there was another door there. Cautiously, he stepped toward it, pausing as the first door swung quietly shut behind him. It still opened again at the slightest push, though, so he continued, his small hands spreading flat on the surface of the new door. It swung open smoothly and silently; he blinked in the sudden light.

He had found a single room, not a passageway, but one large room, the walls made almost completely of windows, beautiful panes of clear glass rimmed with delicate, stained-glass frames and curving lines of metal snaking about, holding it all together. The afternoon sun poured in, washing over the mounds of cloth that might once have been a rich purple but were now faded nearly to white. They plainly covered an array of furniture, most likely long since forgotten, and he could make out several large armchairs, some tables, and perhaps a desk among other unidentifiable shapes. It was all so brilliantly bright.

Draco stood there for a while, just beyond the doorway, looking about at it all, the sun gleaming into his wide gray eyes. His long-dismantled nursery had been decorated in all the colors of the rainbow while this room seemed purely white-gold, but nothing he had seen before in the manor rivaled the brightness of this new discovery. It was all his; the coating of dust on the floor made his nose tingle, but it also told him that no one had been hear for a very, very long time.

He hadn't any idea what to do with it.

Draco's "free" times had been spent in wandering, in skulking through the secret passages to escape his caretakers, and in simply walking until he could stand the silence no longer and returned sulkily to the lectures awaiting him. They had always been times of movement—stillness meant capture—but now, here was a hiding place where he could stay as long as he wanted without interruption. He continued to stand as if rooted to the floor, gazing at the small, pale mountains that rose up before him in the sunlight.

On impulse, he reached over and yanked the cloth off of the nearest chair, sending up a cloud of dust that settled on his dark robes and coated his hair in silver, but all he noticed was the beautiful deep earthy brown of the chair, turned a deep gold by the light streaming through the glass around him. He contemplated it momentarily, and then turned to do the same for the next chair, then a desk, then an empty bed frame, and so on until everything lay open amongst crumpled piles of cloth, the dust hovering in the air in an enchanting miasma.

Carefully, he placed his hands against one chair and pushed it facing another chair until they touched, creating a cradle or boat or something. He climbed agilely into it, practiced at scrambling from entering forbidden passages and rooms, and surveyed his work. He made a point of standing on the cushioned chairs beneath him—Father never let him stand on the furniture—and laughed. He didn't know exactly why, but something happy and brilliant as the light that washed around him was bubbling up inside, and he couldn't help but let it spill out. He set to work, moving everything carefully with as few bumps and scrapings as possible, setting ships upon an imaginary sea, constructing castles and fortresses, and generally creating a kingdom for himself. He had never really had the chance to do such carefree things, but some waking part of the child in him still remembered the peculiar concept of play and unleashed it in his eager imagination.

He ruled his newly created worlds with a capricious scepter, sometimes aloof, sometimes cold, but his legions and subjects never revolted. They were wonderfully tolerant. When he tired of Earth, his boats sailed from the ocean to the deep pools of the night where he floated among the stars and battled with them. He spread the dust-covers out for sails or flags or palace roofs and hung them from his narrow shoulders when he felt especially royal.

His caretakers shook their heads at the dust perpetually layering his clothes, but they assumed it was from the secret passages he used for escape routes. Nobody mentioned anything that even vaguely resembled Draco's bright room or came to invade his peaceful, prospering lands. Perhaps they noticed the light in his eyes that came away with him, but they did not mention it if they did. Lucius and Narcissa certainly did not pay it any attention.

One day, Draco came upon a small chest, tucked away behind an empty mirror from in one corner of his room. It hadn't any lock, and inside was nothing but some more cloth, the deep blues, reds, and greens still well-preserved. There was even still some room in the box. Pleased with this new hiding place, Draco began to squirrel away small objects to add to his kingdom's treasury: some stray Knuts, a silvery snake bracelet, an old book his nanny thought he had outgrown, and a few drawings he had scribbled himself. They were safe from hands that would throw them out in the process of cleaning, always waiting for him when he returned, ready for his games and exhilarating worlds. They didn't scold if he laughed out loud or shut his eyes and flung a handful of Knuts to search for and find later. They simply accepted his need for levity.

That changed a few years later when he found himself at a real school, Hogwarts, where he had others his age. A good number of his classmates in his house were properly awed by his family wealth and prestige, allowing him to rule them like he ruled his fabricated kingdoms back home. The other houses were a bit more insolent, but he learned to be somewhat complacent with the reverence he could get. There were real battles to fight here, with words and snide comments, and he found that sometimes he lost. This came as a small shock to Draco: that he could neither win everyone as an ally nor defeat them at every match.

At least he had his own kingdom among the Slytherins, down in their lair where the deep green and silver whispered a soft, powerful welcome to the residents but hissed doom at any intruder. It served as an adequate place of living, but Draco could not call it home when he was honest with himself. After all, the Slytherin dormitories were in the dungeons where nothing was truly bright. He could not hate it because there was where he felt loved, but he still longed for the secret room at the end of the gallery corridor.

It was still waiting for him when he arrived home for Christmas holidays, the ancient dust of Hogwarts falling away from him, melted by the happiness that remained well preserved, locked away from everyone else. Some of the furniture had faded a little without their dust covers, but Draco barely even noticed as he flung himself into his favorite spot, cushioned by the earth-brown chair, watching the world beyond the tall window.

It seemed all sky. The forest stretched into the distance, but it was far below him, like the sea viewed from the bow of a particularly majestic ship. Sometimes birds emerged fluttering from the emerald ocean, but it remained tranquil for the most part.

Since he had been away, though, his mother insisted on spending more time with him during the holidays, which mostly meant that he had to stay still and listen while she made social visits with the mean-spirited and manipulative wives of his father's friends. He was allowed very little time for him to sneak to his bright room where, even at night, the stars were clearer than when he had watched them anywhere else. Perhaps they even rivaled the view from the Astronomy tower at school. The gallery corridor seemed longer now too.

Maybe it was because it did not twist and turn like the halls at school, but continued, straight and proud, putting what sometimes felt like half the world between him and his secret room. He traversed it anyway, drawn inexplicably by the light, even if he had less and less time for it now. At school, those not in his house talked as if his every tryst with brightness was a trespass against the sanctified illumination of the favored students, as if he ought to only associate with shadows. Fools, he told himself, they knew nothing—but somehow his feet seemed increasingly reluctant to take him down the corridor. It wasn't that the sweetness of his own special room had diminished at all; it was just that the getting there had grown strangely more difficult.

Somehow, too, the memory of how to play was gradually slipping from him. His kingdoms stretched out before him in stagnant tranquility while he lost himself in his own thoughts and sank into the fading cushions of his brown chair. Odd, dignity had never been much of a priority before.

The kingdoms of his mind came only grudgingly to his surroundings, and their colors had somehow faded. His heart still reached out and wrapped itself in the atmosphere of the room, savored the precious freedom, and adored it, but though he felt his love for the place had not diminished, it somehow felt slightly less welcoming. Could his room be jealous of the darkly alluring dungeons he had used as substitute sanctuaries during his time at school?

Whatever the case happened to be, he hardly found himself ill at ease in the brightness. He rediscovered his chest of simple treasures and responded well when they reminded him of wonderful stories he had once told himself. The canopy of his once-palace had come undone at one corner, and now he saw sails billowing and straining, calling him to move on to new delights. The boisterousness of his play diminished gradually, and he spent pensive hours on the deck of his noble ship, watching exotic lands approach and recede on the emerald-blue waves. He still battled, but now added more elegance and finesse to his fighting rather than employ the wild swinging of rapiers and wands while shouting. At other times, he was perfectly content simply to settle on his brown chair and read.

Then again, he realized, he could just as easily sit in his bedroom and read.

During his next holiday home, Draco somehow didn't manage to find the time to visit the room until the very last day before he returned to school. When he had pried open the doors and stood a while, looking at the purity of light streaming down around him, he wondered if perhaps his memory had been exaggerating the exhilaration his surroundings had once imparted. After all, what could have been so terribly exciting about a room full of old furniture when he could settle himself on priceless antiques in any other room of the house? Something that might have been shame pricked at him for once enjoying such simplicity.

When he arrived home the next time, someone had sealed the doors, locking away the brightness, but Draco spent his hours in his room or out with his adoring friends and didn't notice.

_Fin._


End file.
